1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to an image forming apparatus including a waste toner container to store waste toner.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an image forming apparatus forms a latent image on a photosensitive medium using an exposing unit, such as a laser scanning unit, by first receiving a digital image signal corresponding to a desired image. Then, the image forming apparatus develops the latent image as a toner image using a toner and transfers the toner image to a recording medium to be fused on the recording medium by heat and pressure to print the desired image.
The entire toner image developed on the photosensitive medium is usually not transferred to the recording medium, and a portion of the toner remains on the photosensitive medium. The remaining toner may affect subsequent developing and decreases reliability of the image quality. Accordingly, an image forming apparatus generally includes a waste toner container that can separately store waste toner, which is removed toner that is not reused.
The size of developers has increased with the speed and the lifetime of developers. As the size of the developers increases, the amount of waste toner removed from the developers increases as well. Thus, the size of the waste toner container needs to become larger.
However, as the space required to contain the waste toner has become larger, waste toner flowing from an inlet of waste toner is accumulated only around the inlet and waste toner is not accumulated in a portion far away from the inlet. As a result, the space is not efficiently utilized, and overflow of waste toner out of the inlet may occur.
In order to solve the problem of the overflow of waste toner, a paddle, an auger, or a belt is installed around the inlet of the waste toner to transport the waste toner. However, when a paddle is used, the track of the waste toner is limited such that it is impossible to transport the waste toner a large distance from the inlet of the waste toner. Also, the waste toner may be accumulated at a specific position. When an auger or a belt is used, the operating structure of the auger or the belt is complicated and the waste toner container becomes complicated to assemble.